Yes - the Kajiggers and Net Throwers were Uniques.

any Unit that came pre-named and/or had a 'trait' indicator was a Unique.

Gold, namely from combat: will most definitely be getting the nerf-bat.  I will be building an 'encounter' system - that has a gold value attached to the whole 'encounter' in a table, instead of these huge swaths of gold based upon each unit defeated.  It added up quite quickly.

So yes - much agreed.

This was pretty funny =).

Actually - if you did NOT see it - I have been trying to make references to the previous games as they progress.  This round - some of the references were downright obvious: like Bugrem's Landmark.  While some were more subtle (like a Dwarven crafter Unique unit - which was a Reference to Talonrel's last game with his master dwarven smith Unit), most just did not 'come up'.

but, yes - I very much want to continue to integrate more of the storyline in with the events from previous rounds.

To that end - I'd actually like to allow each player to nominate some aspect of their Usurpation to 'carry' to the next game.  Meaning: it will in some way appear as a feature in the next round (I'll decide upon how that gets implemented).

So - since Talonrel was the winner: Talonrel gets to provide me an idea for a new Landmark.

Since Ronja has pulled off the Magister title TWICE - as you have nominated that you want to carry something magic and savage-related, I'll be doing a story update to: "Master of Magic and Prestidigitation" event (Unique Event).

Sylvia - offer me a suggestion on something diplomacy related - as you have pulled the Oathmaker TWICE.

Alhamandriel - you won Iteration 3 with combat and this time, you pulled a strong, diverse force through the Prison - so please give me something "chiefly" (some idea related to gathering troops).

It's pretty funny that I actually wasn't going for crafting this game and still ended up with the Lord of the Blacksmith twice.  What the hell.

Landmarks are difficult to come up with, but give me a few.  I'll think of something.

Also, feel free to open up my IC and Stat-Tracker threads for everyone if they want to see them since we're ending the game now.  Probably not the OOC threads, though.  Considering there are FOUR between the Narrator and me because we actually FILLED three.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:52, Sat 25 June 2016.

Yes - Narratives.

I will be doing my absolute best to do that more so in the future.

On this iteration - there was more effort in "getting the rules down" and making them logical for a computer.

Now, for as long as I continue to play on RPOL; I will try to run the game more narratively here (thus allowing some 'rule-bending' for the sake of narrative).

What does that mean: If you can explain it, and it narratively makes sense - I'll work with you.

One example: Sylvia offering to augment a village to keep it protected.

In the future - if people want to RP-it, I'll find a working way to make it happen.

IG and STT threads are now open.

It should be interesting for people to get comparisons of each other's places.

I would like to very quickly point-out the biggest crazy:
everyone started next to each other:

Everyone started roughly next to one another.
This tells me (primarily) - that everyone REALLY favored the spell-gathering landmark.

Which tells me I need to make getting spells a more consistent experience - and instead, change that landmark to something else.

Quests -
I'm hoping to do a few things with them:

Before I bring-up the list - it will be necessary to understand a term I use with Talonrel to explain how I 'define' things.

"playstyle" or "type" refers to a SUPER-GENERIC way of referring to the "average # of a given actions someone takes"

• thus a "warlord" is someone who gathers a lot of combat units.
• a "combat player" is someone who spends ~50% of their possible actions doing some sort of combat (or close to 50%).
• a "diplomacy player" is someone who tries to spend a lot of their actions or efforts on improving diplomacy...

etc..
etc..

1) Make quests longer in general (both in max time to do them, and...)
2) Make the effects of them permanent.
- If you aid village X, City (on map CP) Y may have a problem with it.
- If you master some secret knowledge (gain an ability) from a quest - it opens up 'Z' new feature in the game for everyone to learn about. (such as an ongoing event).
3) As much as I love pure random - pure random is not conducive to the 'RP' version of the game (the one that will be hosted here on RPOL, or an in-person game).  The computerized version (meaning the automated game) can have pure random - but, it sucks for trying to write a cool story of building up an empire.
- Instead players will be allowed to request a 'category' of story arc, and will receive a quest appropriate to that arc.
4) As a dove-tail to #3 - ALL Quests will feature more than one "playstyle" to complete them.  Right now - all DF 2 - 4 quests needed "one" playstyle to complete them.  Which sucked - because if you were not involved in that playstyle - such as a combat player - not even having a workshop - some quests were just out of reach entirely.
- Thus, each quest will ALWAYS have at least two choices for how to proceed against a given step.

Example Problem (step): "The Villagers need help defending themselves."
Example Choices:
A) Send a Unit to train them (must have X # of combat skill ranks.)
B) Craft and donate any weapon.
C) Attack the nearby bandits.

Each would then lead into a follow-on result (and the degree of difficulty of each would determine future rewards.)

Not...really why I started where I did.  I went for that one largely for the ability to gain a large variety of resources while close to a city and landmark.  The other option on the Southwest of the map didn't have nearly the amount of resource variety to harvest.  Not to mention that the one to the Southwest would not allow for full movement to the West, so I would be wasting potential radius of influence.  That was my logic.  Not that the landmark had to do with magic spells.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:33, Sat 25 June 2016.

I also feel the need to say that I'm glad I got to throw Lord Penfrey in my Prison before the game ended.

YOUR PROGENY WILL REMEMBER THIS, PENFREY!

He and I have had an ongoing feud for like...two iterations. xD

Like I said: I was going to start where the tower was before I even knew about it, then I moved one square away when the landmarks appeared.
Like Talon, I wanted the variety of resources.
And I specifically wanted to live on a Mountain - I forget if I had the idea for the Fort yet or not, but certainly once I did it became a necessity, and even before that it seemed a nicely 'strange' place to live.

But, looking over the Landmarks again...
Really, the only other one that seems interesting is King Bugrem's Hill (B1), specifically the Power of Loyalty aspect (a unit makes a loyalty check, and you get skill-XP)
The rest are fairly mild temporary buffs.
I think any landmark whose special 'ability' is temporary, should probably have a consistently useful 'secondary'.
If I had chosen a place not near either the Tower or the Hill, I would simply have ignored the landmarks entirely.

EDIT: Though, for the record, if this map had been used next game and another was used this time, I probably wouldn't settle where I did once we did get this map.
I specifically wanted to settle fairly centrally, after being fairly alone last time.

2nd EDIT: Oh, I don't think I remembered to mention!:
Regarding CPs and their opinions: I am not a fan of the 'bring a leader of the appropriate race the first time to get a boost' mechanic.
I'd accept it if the 'first time' was removed (still a one-time thing, mind, maybe 'the first time you bring' rather than 'if you bring X the first time')
I do like different groups being able to make friends with different villages.
But having to have them along the first time just seems a bit too... 'Mechanical' for lack of a better term.
I won't protest much if it's kept in, just figured I'd mention it.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:18, Sat 25 June 2016.

Apologies for not providing feedback before this, I've been thinking about things.

I was playing a deliberately different style from Bugrem (more focused on combat and quests, less playing the odds with the action economy) and it didn't 'fit' so well with me so there were a bunch of less focused periods, but it was great fun.

I had hoped to win by completing the magic quest next turn but wanted a new hidden lair to hide in, so unsure if that would have played out (maybe) or whether I would have been found too quickly (I believe probably not). Certainly I had missed the bit about needing to survive for a month until a week or two ago!

Equally I had built more forces almost entirely for offence, but then not played enough to that and broadly ignored crafting until the end other than for the economic bonuses, when I should have either ignored it more or focused on it, rather than the halfway house

Again, congratulations Talonrel :)

Thanks, Alhamandriel!

If it makes you feel better, it probably wouldn't have mattered if you needed to wait it out or not since my action this turn was to turn loose all my forces on your base.  But, honestly, that was the best play!  Since I couldn't win by point value alone against the three of you, I had only a couple options left.  Either attack the Legendaries, or attack you all.  I thought the former was a bad idea because it would give you all time to gather strength while I weakened my own position.  So, I decided to attack each of you in order to prevent you from combining forces to depose me from the pole position!

And I actually ignored crafting most of the game until toward the end as well.  That was largely because I didn't want to repeat the same mistake I made last iteration where I focused so much on crafting that you got super far ahead of me.  xD

So, that's actually the way to go about it.  Ignore it for a while and then start crafting a few things as you set things up to do so toward the mid-game.  At least, that's how it worked out for me.

Talonrel briefly mentioned something I had desperately wanted to ask the other three of you:

why didn't you three? (Alhamandriel, Ronja, and Sylvia) gang-up for an assault on Talonrel?

The THREE of you together could have stopped his onslaught.

In reply to The System (msg # 564):

Because no one offered me a chance to?
I was gearing up for an attack of desperation, since (like I said in the OOC thread several weeks ago) I figured at this point that was my only option.
But I didn't find a single other Lair by the end of the game.
I didn't look that hard, since I was still gearing up, but still.

But, speaking of fights... The results of the last battle doesn't seem to be in anyone's IG thread.
Can those of us who weren't present get to see it?
People're making references to stuff I don't have access to, as far as I can tell :P
This message was last edited by the player at 00:21, Sun 26 June 2016.

Ummmm, after he clocked my ass I had three units. I spied on him the very turn he attacked me if I remember correctly. If I would not have been attacked I would have made the offer to the others, but I had to know where he was first.

Mind you, I had my best offensive unit still, per se, but without an awesome Defensive unit to take hits I don't see even all of us taking him down after I lost 8/11 of my units. Run a SIM if you like, but with his massive Tactics and Leadership it would have taken dozens of units to offset that only to come up against his Orc Warder and its backup. I was trying to complete that 1 quest then I was going to build barracks like crazy.

I am MOST dissatisfied that this game was even shorter than last game in terms of # of weeks before it ended. I also do not know what kind of Victory TW obtained.

Talonrel essentially pulled a Victory by Accrual.

He was about to pull a complete Victory by Domination - but, suffering the remaining grind would have been horrific.

Apologies Ronja - yes, there was no post about it - as Talonrel's forces actually slew three of Alhamandriel's Units in the first round of ranged combat.  It was a land-slide victory.

In reply to Sylvia Starhelm (msg # 566):

yes - the game was a LOT shorter.  Something that will need to be fixed through combat gold and general xp gains.

TW knew about BOTH other bases of Sylvia's?

In reply to Sylvia Starhelm (msg # 569):

Not the one you had just built, Sylvia.  But, I had an idea where your second base was, and I would have launched an attack on Ronja within two turns since I would have narrowed down the base location to one grid space this turn and scouted again in the subsequent turn to confirm it.  Seeing the locations now, I would have discovered Ronja's base at that point and attacked it.

By the way, as per a joking conversation I had with the GM a while ago, I'm officially declaring Forest's Shadow as my MVP unit this game.  They are just a normal unit that I happened to give two special abilities that together ended up turning it into a tactical nuke.

Perceptive + Deep Recon + Offense 6 + Strength 5 + Aggressor 8 + Scout 9 + Pernicious 5 + Powerful Weaponry.

They are probably the scariest unit I had.

Ronja - I very much like your point about the Landmarks - I do, also, believe that every landmark should result in a permanent bonus: and in hindsight; it was much more obvious as to why the other landmarks were nowhere near as popular.

Talonrel (and really everyone else) - had brought-up a point about a small "power" discrepancy between some of the abilities around month 7 or 8-ish.  That was: some of the non-combat-oriented special abilities were "pretty neat" - when you're still in month 2 or 3.  However, many of them lose overall traction as the game progresses and either the Units max-out the relevant skills (and thus the abilities themselves start to feel lackluster) or the overall Usurpation needs more combat capabilities and they (the player) begins to feel shafted for not getting a combat ability instead.

- So, to that end a partial solution to the matter is this: Most abilities will feature some degree of cross-over between two segments of the game.

Ronja should be somewhat familiar with this in terms of your Usurpation-wide ability:
Ranger's Harvest (Tier 1):
Units add their Ranged Weapon's offensive bonus (including quality, if any) to all Harvest checks.  Your Units receive a +5 to Harvest Lumber and Food.

Reading the first part of the sentence - you can see where a "weapon" (something that is most certainly combat-oriented) provides an advantage to a non-combat action.

Another example:
Deep Recon (Tier 2): +10 to Scout checks.  This Unit adds its Scout bonus to its Attack rolls. (This includes bonuses from sources other than the scout skill.

- - The point?  These will become more common-place over time.  And many abilities will be reworked (they already have to anyway for the new combat system) to include more of this cross-over concept.

However, this all leads to another question: Should ABILITIES be upgrade-able with time?
To explain some ramifications:
1) Right now - abilities are given at a particular tier.  That ability, in that form, at that tier is then "removed" as a possibility for acquiring that ability.
- (which is how Ronja was able to get "both" versions of Ranger's Harvest. - The Unit version AND the Usurpation version - but, no one was able to get the standard quest-reward version.)
2) The same ability - at a different tier - can still be acquired by others, or even the same player.
3) Not all tiers inherently have the 'cross-over' effect (meaning - Tier 1 [barring the two examples above, LOL] tends to not have much cross-over, whilst tiers 3 and 4 do.)

In reply to Ronja Lovisdottir (msg # 565):

I truly hope that we can find a way to make it more obvious that players can cooperate together.

Remember - subterfuge AND cooperation are parts of the game.  I am planning to bring-back the council concept, though in a slightly different form (the VPs = Votes thing was too harsh.)

Yes - the Forest's Shadow were easily the most deadly unit (devoid of any other enabling forces/effects) that occurred in this game.  Having successfully outright killed more monsters and units than ANY other Unit or even force in the game;

*ahem - General's voice*
"Yer gettin' promoted, son!"

To that end - there will be a Unique Unit made from that Unit.

I think I can handle a change in the wording (and thus implementation) to:

"the first time you bring..."

I'm quite content with that.  The downside to the other wording was that if you scouted a CP - and your leader wasn't with the scout team - you lost the opportunity straight-away.

So yeah - that'll do.